The Trilisk AI (21 page)

One
of the things made it up Magnus’s leg. He felt it attacking him, but it
couldn’t hurt him anywhere the Veer armor protected him. He disarmed his weapon
and slammed the rifle butt against his quadricep, smashing the critter.

“I’m
out of ammo,” Telisa said.

“You
still have your knife?”

“Yes,
I got one with it already. But they keep coming!”

Magnus
had noticed that. Every time his light swept across the area he saw more.
Another one crawled up his leg. Telisa emitted an angry noise that told him
there were creatures on her, too. He swept his light over her.

Damn,
there’s two or three on her back! We’re in trouble.

Magnus
ripped the creatures off her back with his bare hands, tossing them away before
they could bite or sting him.

“I
don’t know if I can keep going. So tired,” she said. Her knife descended into
two more of the things on the nearest cavern wall.

Poison?
Or just fatigue from the fighting?

Magnus
reactivated his rifle. He fired three more rounds in as many seconds. His
ammunition supply was running low.
This is exactly why we have lasers and
stunners. But you had to stick with old faithful, here.

“Wait,”
Telisa transmitted through her link. “I think we’re stirring them up. Let’s get
back on our ropes and be still.”

Magnus
had five rounds left. He was ready to embrace any alternate plan. He contacted
his abandoned rope. The free end snaked over toward him so he could grab it. He
swung out and asked it to retract a bit, carrying him up away from the ledge.

“Now
just be still. I think those things have mass sensors like Shiny. We move too
much, and our bullets move a lot, maybe it attracts them.”

The
creatures did look a little like Shiny, or at least as much as a small monkey
resembled a human.

“It
could be our lights attracting them, too. Let’s turn them off.”

“Shit.
I’m afraid. But yes, good idea.”

They
turned off their lights to allow darkness to envelop them. After a few seconds,
Magnus’s eyes adjusted enough to see Scout’s lights down below. The robot had
almost reached them.

“I
think some of them are chewing on Scout. Let him attract them a bit longer,
then I’ll shut him down, too,” Magnus said.

A
swarm of the creatures attacked Scout, but its surface was too hard to be
harmed by creatures so small. Magnus brought Scout to a halt ten meters below.

Telisa
flicked a few crawlers off her rope as they came, but otherwise she had frozen.
Magnus hung next to her and did the same.

“I’m
leaving Scout’s lights on. He’s still now; we can see if it’s the motion.”

“I
think it is,” Telisa said. “On Earth, so many things are similar. Heck, even a
lobster has a head with eyes and a mouth. These creatures may all have the mass
sense. And being underground, they may be blind. We know Shiny is deaf. If
these things are similar to him, those knobs at the end of their bodies are
probably their mass sense organs.”

“It
has to be in relative motion, right?”

“Yes.
And his clearest picture is when he stands still and uses that weaving motion
to move his sensor back and forth in a regular pattern. These things don’t do
that. I bet their sense is inferior to Shiny’s.”

The
creatures around Magnus and Telisa were already moving away. Whatever they’d
done, it was working. Magnus shifted slowly toward Telisa and reached out to
grasp her arm. Blood poured out of her wrist. He wrapped his mouth around her
wound and sucked blood out. He spat it out. He sucked on it again.

“You
think it was poisonous?” Her rising voice told him she hadn’t yet considered
the possibility.

“It
should be okay,” he said. “It’s bleeding, which is good. It’ll wash out the
wound.”

Magnus
pulled his pack around from his back and took out their medical kit.

“Why
did you suck the blood out? You think it’s venomous?”

“I
don’t know. I saw some kind of sacs on the side of its head. It reminded me of
a poisonous snake. But it’s probably nothing.”

“Not
exactly what I envisioned for a romantic interlude on an alien planet,” Telisa
said.

Magnus
nodded, then spat again. He put a small light in his mouth, aimed it at her
wrist, and put artificial skin over the puncture.

“It’s
only a little red,” he said.

“It
just scared me more than anything else,” Telisa said. “What are the chances
some Vovokan critter’s venom will work on a human?” She said it dismissively.

“Very
low,” Magnus agreed. “Especially judging by how different Shiny is. At this
point if you feel anything, it’s likely you’re just having a psychological
reaction to the imagined danger.”

He
watched Telisa. She seemed to be calming down. But she wasn’t fully recovered
yet. His eyes caught the weapon at her side.

“I
didn’t know you packed that. I don’t even
recognize
it.”

Telisa
stared back at him with an odd look on her face.

“It’s
from over here. I don’t know how it got here.”

Sweat
glinted on her face in the reflected illumination of their utility flashlights.
Telisa turned her light toward an alcove in the wall. Magnus followed the light
and saw a square cabinet against the wall. The cabinet had clear doors, behind
which weapons were visible, sitting vertically on a rack.

“That
is—”

“Yes.
It’s a human weapons cabinet.”

“Five
Holies,” he said, using Telisa’s favorite exclamation without thinking about
it. He walked over to the case. There was no doubt it was of human design. The
case stood out as anomalous in the smooth natural curves of the Vovokan cavern.
It had square corners and a smooth metal surface in sharp angles. The clear
windows and weapons rack looked just like the weapons rack back on the
Iridar
.

How
is that possible? Has Shiny’s race met humans before?

“So
what’s a human weapon doing here?” Telisa asked, voicing the question Magnus
struggled with.

Magnus
took the weapon from Telisa. It felt good. He examined it with his light.

Oh,
no.

“It
says ‘Meer,’ like a screwed-up Veer logo. Like a blend of Momma and Veer.”

Magnus
handed it back to Telisa, but she just replaced it in the cabinet and took out
another. Then she robbed the third of its ammunition. She slung the rifle over
her back and packed away the extra clip.

“Does
that remind you of anything?” he asked.

“Hell
yes, it does! It reminds me of a certain crappy Trilisk trap we got stuck in.
Are we in one now? If we’re in one now I’m going to scream. What if we never
left?” she asked.

“No
point in assuming that. Even though it’s possible, we can’t really change our
actions just on the possibility. At least the weapon actually works. It may be
screwy on the details, but your link activated it and it killed several of
whatever those ugly buggers are.”

“Yes.
It’s quite effective.”

Magnus
looked at Telisa in the reflected light. His vision blurred for a second.

“What’s
wrong? Magnus!” Telisa’s voice rose quickly.

Magnus
felt a stab of pain in his stomach.

“Uhm.
Maybe I should have used the extractor from the kit on your wrist,” he said,
kneeling.

“I
don’t understand. How could whatever is making you sick not be hurting me too?
It’s already in my blood.”

Another
wave of pain came from Magnus’s stomach.

“Get
an emetic from the pack,” he grunted. Telisa paused to access the inventory
with her link, then plucked out a small vial. She handed it over.

Magnus
bit open the soft top seal of the vial and downed it. The pain in his stomach
flowered. Then he bent over and vomited violently. When he opened his eyes,
there was blood in the pool before him.

“By
the Five,” Telisa said. “Does it feel better now?”

“It’s
a bit better,” Magnus said. He sat heavily. “Our romantic interlude continues.”

Telisa
smiled weakly.

Chapter 16

“
Okay, Cilreth. Turn the suit on and
proceed another hundred meters to Station One,” Relachik transmitted.

 Cilreth
activated the suit. It was only the second time she’d done so in real life. She
looked down. Her body faded into a ghost with glowing outlines just as it had
in the simulations. She stopped reflecting light in the visible spectrum and
replaced it with light from the outside environment. The infrared emissions
were pretty clean, too.

She
spotted the rock formation ahead that was Station One. It was clearly visible
in the low illumination that was night on Brighter Walken. There was enough
natural light reflected from the planet’s beautiful ring to see a hundred
meters even in the absence of direct sunlight on the surface.

This
was their selected spot to hide until the attack arrived. Cilreth wondered
again if the attack would be spectacular. Relachik had assured her the distance
would be adequate. Yet he had told her to hide among the rocks and leave the
stealth suit activated “just in case.”

He’s
probably just being extra safe because he knows I’m not Space Force material.
But pulling this off should show him I’m capable of handling whatever he’s got.

She
waited, watching the compound from her own position as well as the feeds from
Relachik and Arlin. The ground had been cleared of large rocks and other cover
for fifty meters outside the wall around the entire perimeter. The area inside
the wall was big enough for a sprawling building over one hundred meters on a
side. For the thousandth time, Cilreth wondered what was inside that compound.
Stockpiles of drugs? Booby traps? Illegal robots? A small army of drug dealers?

“Someone
is leaving,” Arlin said. Cilreth caught sight of a group of men leaving the
compound in Arlin’s feed. She stayed put and watched the compound for signs of
attack.

“Cilreth,
stay sharp,” Relachik sent her. “We can’t back you up for a while. If I’m right
about the Avatar, though, this should be a piece of cake for you.”

“Got
it,” she said.
Damn, having them nearby was really helping me stay calm.

She
watched in silence for another ten or fifteen minutes. The wait was pure agony.
She stretched her neck while she waited to release a bit of the tension.
Suddenly the compound lights went off. Cilreth held her breath. A few blue
sparks erupted from two or three spots around the perimeter. Then there was
nothing but darkness.

She
started her timer. Cilreth waited for three minutes without seeing anything
else.

That
was it? I’m underwhelmed.
“I’m headed in. Talk at you when I’m done.”

The
answer was delayed by five seconds.

“Good
luck.”

What
they hell are they doing? Killing those men who escaped?

Cilreth
tried to calm her breathing as she walked out of her cover toward the compound
wall. The lack of lights became so creepy she almost stopped.
No! I can’t
chicken out now.

Cilreth
started to breath faster. She ignored the panic in her gut and just kept
walking.
I’m invisible, goddammit.

The
gate of the compound wall was gone without a trace. Cilreth didn’t see wreckage
or burn marks. The edge of the wall had been cleaved perfectly. The shiny metal
of the support beams were cut cleanly exactly where they emerged from the stony
ground. She looked left and right for any debris. She saw none.
Okay, that’s
a bit more impressive. It’s like the gate was just vaporized within a certain
radius.

The
guards lay strewn about. They looked as though they had simply dropped in
place. Cilreth approached one and stared. The man breathed very slowly.

Alive.
Cilreth shrugged and moved on. The
compound had one entrance. It was a perfectly cut gaping hole in the front of
the building where the front doors used to be. The new edges gleamed. Despite
the apparent lack of any defense, Cilreth walked carefully into the building,
hugging the edge of the hole and slipping carefully inside. She kept close to
the wall and remained alert.

The
basic layout looked similar to the simulations. The same major corridor ran
past the entrance, so she headed off to the right. Then she took a left to head
deeper into the complex. The next room she found was large. It looked like some
kind of small lab or factory. Two dead security robots lay on the floor. They
each had a three-centimeter hole, edges gleaming, drilled completely through
the main body.
Looks like the F-clave managed to get their hands on some
hydras, for all the good that did them.

Her
personal sensor suite detected a network storage unit in the floor. She walked
over to the corner and pried open an access panel. She kneeled in front of the
first storage unit. It had a white outer casing. Cilreth took out her cutter.
Looks
standard enough. High quality, but normal. Here goes nothing.